What planning for the ‘Year 2000’? Command and planning in 1960s–70s Soviet economic debates and policy

This article examines Soviet economic planning through the lens of key debates from the 1960s–70s, which critically reassessed both its foundational principles and structural shortcomings. It focuses on the idea, advanced by reform economists, that a deep-seated dichotomy existed between command and planning – a tension that, in their view, fundamentally undermined the viability of planning as a governing principle. Special attention is given to one of the most incisive proponents of this argument, Aleksandr M. Birman. The dichotomy he and others described emphasized the conflict between dominant ‘administrative methods’ (i.e. command) and sidelined ‘economic methods’ (i.e. planning), revealing how the persistence of command distorted the very concept of planning officially at the heart of the Soviet model. Drawing on both original archival sources and existing scholarship, this article explores the intellectual, political and economic stakes of this debate, including the costs borne and power retained by the Party through its continued reliance on command. In doing so, it contributes to recent historiography on late Soviet economic thought by reintroducing Birman into the intellectual matrix of 1960s–70s reform discussions and offering a distinct interpretive angle on the internal critique of the command economy.